The Soapbox Platform

WordPress switchover

2008-10-24T06:37:00.000-07:00

Shona Ghosh's blog is now here

Industry confessionals

2008-09-19T13:11:00.000-07:00

I thought I would charter my wobbling progress in the ‘sharky'* industry which is local journalism. It has got off to an unpromising start.

Despite having to pay City University £9000 of my father’s pension and another £8000 of rent to a Haringay landlord, I must go and work for some local newspapers. For free. I will then eventually qualify to enter City. Then I will achieve the £17,000 MA which will lead to a £12,000 job. Righto.

Trinity Mirror and Johnston Press are the two major local newspaper stables and have maintained an embarrassingly high profile over the last six months. Local print journalism has taken a massive blow to the financial broadside since the property market began its downward spiral, for a very simple reason - advertising.

Papers were once graced by a rich crop of property advertising which, since the housing market downturn, has become a thinning scalp. As the advertising funds tighten, so do newspaper company belts and hacks are forced to work extra long shifts to cover work left by gaps in the workforce. If a reporter leaves, it is more than likely he will not be replaced, and his work is quietly absorbed by the grumbling colleagues who remain. This is bad news for everyone; the quality of journalism (already questionable) goes down and hopeful graduates don’t get the jobs which overworked reporters don’t really want to be doing in the first place.

However, in our attempts to ingratiate ourselves into this loveless industry, we prostitute ourselves on a weekly basis at some middle-of-the-road regional. I begin my first placement in a bad temper - an entire summer of work experience means I have no cash to see my friends, buy any smart work clothes or learn to drive. In fact I can’t really afford to do this placement at all, but this is a problem overlooked by generations of the public schoolboys who call the shots. Polly Toynbee can call herself a social champion when she makes work experience illegal under the Slavery Abolition Act. Until then, she can shut up.

* Mary “Darey” Bishop, Bordon Post. See next entry for further info.

Leam Courier's In praise of....public benches

2008-08-15T14:20:00.000-07:00

It is a truth universally unacknowledged that there is nowhere to sit down in England.

Outside, at any rate. You don’t want to pay that extra 60p for lunchtime coffee just to ‘eat in’. You’re effectively paying a very small amount of rent for that piece of MDF posing as a chair. No, you declare, summoning up some good, solid British jingoism before flouncing outside.

Whereupon you find yourself overwhelmingly presented with the problem of the modern human condition. So obsessed are we by commerce, shop fronts and efficient use of municipal space that you are now presented with nowhere put aside merely to sit.

Except lo and behold – there in Jephson Gardens lies the humble wooden bench. No rent fee necessary and scarred with ‘ROSIE 4EVA’, it even inspired landscape artist Charles Neal.

On bearing the inscription ‘For Doris’ beckons like a warm hug. Thanking Doris under your breath, you finally find somewhere to enjoy your now lukewarm coffee before the heavens open to quench that British jingoism once and for all.

There’s always some sheltered pavement just round the corner but despite this being public property you will invariably be moved on by the police. Unless of course you construct some kind of purpose-made board explaining your dilemma, while holding out your coffee cup to collect that all-important 60p.

Leam Courier - Gen Y

2008-08-14T14:14:00.000-07:00

There are some fashionable buzzwords being bandied about by the press this week. Leading the league table of overused phrases is ‘narcissism’, usually in reference to Barack Obama’s image heavy presidential campaign. Outdoing even Narcissus, not only does he coo over his own reflection, but inflicts it on the global public.

As Big Brother has sadly demonstrated, self-obsession is no longer a celebrity attribute. We all want a slice, and no one does vanity quite so well as the British teenager.

Which brings me to buzzword number two, ‘Generation Y’. The cohort of Generation Y spent an angst-ridden, spotty youth communicating its woes through the Nokia 3210 (remember that?) and MSN Messenger. Ten years later, it is extremely internet-savvy and responsible for a complete revamp of what is considered to be alternative culture.

They are the teenagers and 20-somethings who spend hours on social networking sites, feeding an appetite hungry for online entertainment and stimulation. A prime example of a Gen Y whiz kid is Mark Zuckerberg, the 24-year-old CEO of Facebook.

Here users can post photographs, artwork, manipulated images and whatever else they want others to see. A consequence of this is the ‘MySpace photo’ – you know, a bunch of teenage girls holding out a camera at arm’s length while pouting into the lens. If deemed acceptable, this photograph will find its way online, possibly in flattering black and white. There it will scream, “We are having fun! Look! So much fun!” to envious friends who will go out and do precisely the same thing.

This is simply one example of how we choose to present images of ourselves – only partially reflective of our true appearances and entirely manipulated to our own agendas. Through text and photos, life is reflected as Generation Y wants it. Technology has enabled us to change not only the image, but the mirror itself.

Warwick Shootout - "Watch"

2008-06-25T08:05:00.000-07:00

In the last week of term (ever!) at Warwick, I along with some mates from RaW entered the Shootout film-making competition. Two very nasty conditions of the competition are in-camera editing (i.e. no shuffling of scenes on a computer) and having 24 hours to make the 4-minute film. 28 teams entered; The Rats' Nest consisted of myself, Ben Worsfield, Will Thomas, Charlie Fuller and Matt Rebeiro.

Due to a mixture of creativity, stubbornness and, frankly, distilled genius we won Best Performer (Will), Best Direction and Best Film.

ITS - Immuno Technologically Shitty syndrome

2008-03-02T16:03:00.000-08:00

Warwick loves to represent itself as one cohesive whole. It has smug little banners as you drive in. The campus is encapsulated within the bounds of University Road. Big Nige invites you to breakfast to allow students to give him feedback. There’s even a book about Warwick PLC – we’ve all heard the student spiel about the vast, corporate machine. Except that this cohesion is porkier than the animated pig. Everywhere you look, campus is in fact a Sellotaped machine of cogs. Lecturers, I have generally found, refuse to be cogs. From the snide, throwaway remark about the infantilism of seminar registers to a downright refusal to follow standard marking schemes, academics will always be stubborn bastards. Hurray.

Now this is where the bitch comes. A streaming deluge of vitriol and frustration, poured liberally over one particularly cogged and clogged machine. ITS. May they be disembowelled and hung on the ‘Welcome to Warwick’ poles. It has to be said, Res Net is vastly improved from my arrival in 2005. It took them a couple of years to wise up on the big download clients like SoulSeek, LimeWire and BitTorrent, but they got there eventually. Hey look - they even know what 4OD is! Now last time a fellow journalist bitched about one tentacle of the Warwick octopus, he was summoned to the department in question and got a smacked botty. It’s discourteous to complain through a student newspaper apparently. The correct approach is of course to complain to the department itself.

This poses a slight problem with ITS. While the residential network is buffing its nails and ignoring your frantic attempts to access JSTOR, you are of course incapable accessing customerservices@warwick.ac.uk. By the time service is restored (the February record is 48 hours, with a hitch in Monday’s service of…oh, 3 hours and counting), all that seething anger which you could channel into such beautifully vituperative eloquence has completely died. You’re just thankful to have Facebook again. With a righteous indignation only topped by Christian saints, I constructed an e-mail of (fairly) polite complaint. After a fortnight’s gap, I got a thinly veiled middle-finger from their ‘customer services’ desk. ‘Resolution,’ it said in tones of injured pride, ‘was not as expedient as we had wished’.

Well that’s one thing you got right.

I feel sorry for them sometimes. Their mission statement, to which I’m inclined to give about as much credence as Thomas’ lost Gospel, is simply to give us students the Internet. And the most efficient way to do this is to stop us downloading the next series of Lost. Fair play. What they’ve failed to take into consideration is Warwick’s inherent geekiness. If the odd theatre student can come equipped with a sound knowledge of html, then my God, what are the computer scientists capable of? So they ban one thing, and the Geek Army C++ their way out of it. And down comes Res Net. According to a polite lady in Reception, ITS don’t work on weekends. I thought it an embarrassing misconception on her part not to realise that they don’t work on weekdays either. Poor lady, what did she know.

I am an honest citizen. I have never downloaded at Warwick, though I did manage to stop Res Net for a day without even knowing about it. But that’s a story for another day. Like discovering a faithless lover, I don’t even know what to fume most about. Is it the wasted time and money on an unfulfilling service? Or is it the overwhelming sense of dishonesty, the lack of prior warning? I resort to the inferior services of the library or (grurgh) the student computer room. Such a grey, soulless experience. All I can do is write another twisted love letter, to vent my bitter feelings. ‘Dear ITS, I would like to lodge a complaint’. There. That told you.

Disproportional representation

2008-02-11T13:57:00.000-08:00

So the elections are over. Do you care? Did you even vote?

No. Of course you didn’t. I know this, because the voting figures comprised under 15% of the university’s student body. And that minuscule percentage will consist of the candidates, their pets, and that bloke they met at the pub. A few members of the media societies perhaps who have yet to drown in their own hypocrisy.

Voter apathy is a bad habit at so young an age. This being an exceptionally middle-class university, disdain at proletarian ignorance during the general elections usually results in ‘Well...it’s probably a good thing half the population don’t vote. They wouldn’t even know what they’re voting for.’ The SU aren’t quite as cack-handed as the Blair government, but it might be if you don’t tell it what to do. You’re not ‘the population’; you’re in the top 5% of intelligent people in this country. Unless you go to Score.

I covered the elections night on Saturday for RaW. People who asked me about it were generally impressed at the fact that the winning candidate (Stuart ‘Tommo’ Thomas) obtained almost double the votes than rival Peter Ptashko. I told them to fuck off. 1712 votes made Tommo’s victory. That's not an impressive feat. There are approximately 20,000 union members and about 12% of you voted. 1712 people do not represent the Warwick student body; therefore neither does Tommo. I’m not questioning the legitimacy of his win. He is indisputably the Union President, and if you don’t like it, then it’s your own fault. How can Stuart Thomas possibly claim to represent the student body when barely any of them bothered to check out and question his policies? What are his views on No Platform vs. free speech? What is he really going to do about the Union rebuild?

There were some interesting claims in the manifestos which needed serious grilling from the students to ascertain their veracity. How exactly did James Berragan intend to overrule the University and encourage such publications as the Sanctuary? How did Peter Ptashko finally pull off a lecture-free Freshers’ Week? Did Peter Thomas actually have any policies of his own or was he just a Tory Party bitch? Frankly I found all of the presidential candidates an unprepossessing bunch and voted for persistent underdog R.O.N. Although I voted for Woolley second, solely because it was nice to come across something resembling a sense of humour. ‘Nuts about Students’ didn’t quite cut it for me.

Elections intrigues are actually quite interesting, if you look into them. For example, a certain member of the democracy committee is allegedly under investigation for mouthing off about the rivals of a wannabe Sports Officer. Who is, incidentally, her boyfriend. Meanwhile, it’s likely that Tommo garnered a good proportion of his votes from Warwick Snow Society, of which he happens to be President. Warwick Snow isn’t the only society to attempt to monopolise the elections campaigns; there are also candidate clusters from RAG and of course the Tories. RAG, it appears, has won the day showing the Warwick students apparently prize altruism. Or they may just be familiar with new Societies Officer Lucy Reynolds as she chairs the RAG quiz every Sunday. Another wannabe Sports Officer claimed to have founded a club, but failed to mention that he was voted off the exec by his own team. And so on and so forth.

I have, at best, an ambiguous relationship with the SU. I don’t like how soft drinks cost as much as alcohol on a night out. I dislike its insistent monopolisation of student creativity (i.e. a vicious dislike of the Sanctuary). I think that flirt! was a really, REALLY bad idea. I don’t quite understand why it has a pro-life stance. But I do realise that anyone who dislikes any aspect of the SU should probably make things change by voting. This isn’t the general election, and actually, your vote does make a difference. Get involved. Come on....propose a motion to get rid of Score at the next Union Council meeting. You know you want to. No? Bugger...

Political correctness

2008-02-03T15:23:00.000-08:00

Driven to extremes by poverty last term, I risked the campus hairdressers. I was assigned a perfectly pleasant young man who lived in Kenilworth and thought Leamington made an exotic night out. I hate hairdresser/dentist/builder chit-chat but this one was new and as yet not worn down by the tedium of student attempts at small-talk.

As he was making me the new Tina Turner, he questioned my country of origin. Being a British subject, I replied I was English. This appeared to bemuse him and he said, ‘But…you are Indian originally aren’t you?’ I thought it would be unfair to pick out his vague use of ‘originally’ or indeed his assumption that I wasn’t perhaps Pakistani, Filipino, Iranian, Iraqi, Indonesian, Bangladeshi or North African. Strangely, I preferred his direct curiosity to the pained expressions of gap-year students who struggle to ask me the same basic question in politer terms. Ignorance is easier to deal with it when it’s obvious.

So I smiled back at him and replied that my parents were indeed Indian but had been in England for almost 30 years. Without any hesitation, he asked whether my upbringing had been strict. Again, I could have been pedantic about what strictness strictly means. Was he viewing strictness through eyes accustomed to media images of the hijab and honour killings? Because if that was the case, I clearly wouldn’t be sat in a hairdresser’s chair at Warwick uni. To be honest, I don’t think he thought the definition through that much. I looked at him quite carefully as I remarked that my parents were fairly Westernised.

I don’t remember what this man looked like, but I remember his exact tone as he grinned broadly and replied ‘Oh well, we like ‘em like that’.

I was unoffended. He was the man waving scissor blades in close proximity to my face, after all. But there was a genuine innocence in this whole dialogue where I almost felt it was a travesty to read too much into it. But I still don’t know whether I’m excusing ignorance for innocence. Is it right, is it hysterical to question what this man’s attitude would have been to the people who aren’t ‘like that’. And was it worrying that this man can only have been a year older than myself?

Strangely, it was a more subtle episode with a fellow student which troubled me more.

I rarely take offence to racial insults levelled at me, usually because they are in jest. It’s one very confusing symptom of a post-post-post modern culture of irony and self-effacement that allows one white man to call a coloured man ‘chocolate bear’ out of nothing but affection. Some months after my exchange with the hairdresser had taken place, I was assigned a presentation by a tutor. It involved meeting another student to discuss a novel set in Kerala, in South India. South India is as foreign a country to me as it is to most of the Caucasian population. Probably most gap year students know more about it than I do.

I barely knew this student except from a term of seminars together. Yet when it came to working together, he somehow felt it appropriate to comment a propos of nothing that my room decorations were my way of displaying my ethnicity. Everything in my room is from Paperchase, and not from cottage-industry workers as he seemed to presume. I was slightly non-plussed by his non-sequitur but put it down to social awkwardness. When it came to analysing the novel, he proved to be no better than my Kenilworth hairdresser, telling me that I might as well carry the seminar as I’d know more on the subject than anyone else. The beauty of these comments was that they were so indirect. I don’t know what it was about them which annoyed me – the fact that they weren’t funny, that they came from a stranger or whether I just felt they were offensive.

‘Political correctness gone haywire’ is a phrase I often seem to hear from the polite middle-class who constantly attempt to use ‘correct’ terms and phrases when referring to diverse cultures. But the effect of this correctness on the younger generation seems to have led to an almost ideological problem. How can I accuse anyone of prejudice when they make such veiled remarks? Would drawing attention to myself create some kind of negative boy-cried-wolf reputation for trouble? Racism, sexism and all the other isms aren’t as apparent as they were in the 1950’s. Scandals like football-pundit Ron Atkinson in 2004, or more recently Australian cricketer Andrew Symonds this year are actually quite rare in the media.

Middle-class racism is exceptionally difficult to perceive. Under a veil of politically correct language, it’s difficult to differentiate between personal opinion and prejudice. Take Ron Atkinson’s remark: ‘Chinese women are the unprettiest in the world’. Had Big Ron Manager chosen to, he could have quietly hidden the obvious idiocy in this remark behind a more careful phrase, like ‘I personally don’t find Chinese women attractive’. Simply by adding ‘personally’, the speaker implies that his view of Chinese women is not universal. This in itself is of course not racist – but can allow someone who is racist to mask prejudice or ignorance under this kind of veiled dialogue.

I return to the incident over my ethnic decorations and my apparently inherent knowledge of South India. Strip away the mask of vocabulary, and what this student implied was that there was a basic sameness about the myriad Indian cultures. He felt no need to ask my ethnic origin because he assumed a person who looked Indian must be Indian, despite my never making this apparent. He also assumed that however I decorated my room, it was consistently with this ethnicity in mind. But precisely because these two strange remarks were made in a casual, work-oriented context, I am still puzzling out my reactions. I haven’t ever even mentioned to this person that I was uncomfortable with his remarks.

Why should a generation used to that strange animal, ‘multiculturalism’ find it so difficult to communicate? Political correctness is only a virtue when it illumines rather than hides. To know that Kerala is very different from Bengal, to understand that the standards of beauty amongst the Chinese are no more nor less than amongst any other nation and the willingness to accept that Westernisation can be materially damaging – that is political correctness.

In the beginning there was the Word...

2008-01-20T16:48:00.000-08:00

I have decided that Leamington Spa is Warwickshire’s own cursed city, the Babylon of the Midlands. Those of you familiar with the Bible (King James, Good News or Rainbow’s illustrated) will be aware that there is a particular passage in which God promises not to try and actively destroy mankind. Go and look it up, it involved rainbows.

If you have lived in Leamington, you will have had a biblical experience to finally prove that this was in fact complete bollocks. June 2007 saw me fishing out my exam notes from my own personal Noah’s Flood. One minute I was swinging about on my chair reading a book, the next I was ankle-deep in water. This had an annoying cinematic quality to it, which meant when I ran screaming upstairs, no one was inclined to believe I was being serious.

My room was pond-like at the best of times. I lived in a basement, which offered me the dual pleasures of eternal darkness and the extensive scenery offered by…a brick wall. Interesting green spores seemed to grow and shrink on my walls, leaving the odd splotchy pattern here and there. Fun as these were, I developed a kind of death rattle whenever there was an impending rainstorm.

Being a strident atheist and therefore needing someone more earthly to take the blame, I felt that my landlord, in this case was God. God, in this case, is a multi-millionaire with a monopoly over the properties of Leamington. Not only was his beard inescapable evidence, but it was always his emissaries and never the man himself who checked out the damage. This is the man who is everywhere and yet nowhere in Leamington at once, particularly when the toilet had sprung a midnight leak. I’d always had aspirations as a child to live in a house with an indoor swimming pool, though said aspirations didn’t involve me actually living in the pool.

With my second year exams due to begin the next day, I began to panic. I stood ankle-deep in water and watched my notes drift by with much the same horror that you’d watch an incautious squirrel drown. It was one of the better dog-ate-my-homework stories I could present to my tutors. The next day, our local and entirely useless estate agent dropped by. I opened the door to a trim, portly gentleman wearing the kind of pratty suede shoes which would inspire a feeling of bilious hatred in any feeling human soul. He had a comb-over and carried a man-bag. Purposely, I allowed him to lead the way to my room and watched with spiteful amusement as he soaked a pristine shoe in four inches of stagnant water. He swore a lot.

God sent his ministering angels after I kipped on the sofa to aquavac the remnants of the flood. Quite pikey angels from Leicester, who stole my rug and didn’t appear to comprehend that painting over the mould wasn’t actually akin to getting rid of it. By midnight, I was wallowing in a quagmire of theological housing despair. Much as I’d like to pretend that Leamington is a pit of sin being purged by a hail of terrors, it isn’t. It’s just full of students, locals and a bearded lady with an obsession with 50ps.

Following the stars across south Leamington in search of a bed for the night and bent under the weight of my worldly possessions, I pondered. Maybe God was trying to tell me something about the wider world. Is Leamington just a microcosmic version of the property ladder? I find myself beleaguered by rivers of sewage, locust-like landlords, a hail of useless agents and naturally, a plague of mice. I can’t claim that God killed my first-born, but that’s probably only because I don’t have one. Now I know how Job felt.

Pole politics

2007-12-23T11:43:00.000-08:00

2005 was a confusing year for the feminist cause. On a national scale, the supposed bra-burners roared over a culture of sex, drugs and more sex brandishing aloft the piquant weapon that was Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs. The sub-title was, slightly less pithily, ‘women and the rise of raunch culture’. It begins: 'Meet the Female Chauvinist Pig – the new brand of “empowered woman” who wears the Playboy bunny as a talisman, bares all for Girls Gone Wild, pursues casual sex as if it were a sport, and embraces “raunch culture” wherever she finds it.’

In short, the products of the feminist generation like to pretend they’re as hardy as blokes in the more biological aspects of romance.

Sadly for Ariel Levy, England – and our university included - saw a massive rise in a new fad exercise – pole-dancing. If you were a Fresher in Warwick, you might have spotted innocent pastel leaflets advertising a fun new dance club. Warwick Exotic Dancers began as a casual exercise class run between the exec and a professional dancer.

When I joined up to Warwick’s new society, the only Ariel I knew did my washing. When I oh-so-playfully wrote for an e-zine declaring the unimpeachable health benefits of pole-dancing, somewhere above, Emmeline Pankhurst despaired.

2 years later, and I have become the very fuddy-duddy I originally sought to defy. Smug in my post-modern (synonym: non-existent) feminism, I would gather up my shorts and leather boots and sashay pole-wards. I got a dubious kick from the strained ‘...you do pole-dancing?’ and the lit-up eyes from my male friends. Because dance is a performance art. Any kind of dance. And any woman swinging around a pole imagines – however fleetingly, usually not that fleetingly – herself in front of admiring audience.

Which is, incidentally where the Warwick Exotic Dancers found themselves in 2007. In order to gain status as a society, the Warwick Exotic Dancers had to convince the resident Women’s Officer that this was quite definitely a non-spectator sport. They succeeded, and the women were left to eventually reach a semi-professional standard. There’s certainly nothing to be said against their dedication.

But, but. The constitution has now been amended to allow the society to give performances. How this one has slipped through the cogs is an astonishing display of Union bumbling. This is not merely performance in theory – 2 members of all the media societies were cordially invited to a gratuit performance. And the 2 that jumped at the chance in our biggest media society, RaW, were naturally men.

And what else was to be expected? Will they honestly persuade themselves that they are watching amateur athletes, displaying an acrobatic finesse to be admired as much for its difficulty as aesthetic beauty?

On one side of the media sphere, the university (with the Union’s support) bans The Sanctuary on campus.* Its justification is that the newspaper is run for profit. Why this is ethically more catastrophic than a group of intelligent women insulting themselves for the sake of entertainment is something only the skewed morals in the Ents office may explain to me.

I’m all in favour of free choice, and the society is of course free to do as it chooses. It is not free to choose how its audience thinks about its performers. Think for a minute ladies (gentlemen may find this one easier to answer) – what exactly do you like about pole-dancing? Really? What puts it above a nice game of table-tennis? Come off it, don’t tell me it’s ‘muscle tone’. It’s that little naughty thrill a woman apparently gets pretending to be, basically, a kind of sex worker. Because every kind of dance has a performance element in mind. I genuinely worry that a Warwick student could make an active choice to perform a pole-dance for an audience - it renders the intellect which got her here in the first place null and void.

*Actually this is a lie. The university is not banning the Sanctuary, it is merely exercising its right to remove it from its private property. Just to clear that up.

Right of reply: listen to the pole-dancers talk to Soapbox

Beardbook

2007-12-22T20:44:00.000-08:00

The current target of my wrath is a technological development which has brought our society closer to a complete stripping of privacy. It has rendered us open to all kinds of invasive private censorship.

It is of course that scapegoat of all evils, Facebook.

A friendly SSLC representative informs me that my academic department has issues with Facebook. Namely groups created on them. Namely groups created specifically about lecturers. Apparently there are 16 related to the English department alone.

Out of sheer curiosity I attempted to track said 16 down. I also didn’t particularly fancy reading Frankenstein. By typing in ‘English literature’, only 1 student-created group in any way relevant to lecturers appeared. (Debating the resemblance between a tutor and Rasputin, incidentally). It’s a fun game – try it with your own department.

This leads me to conclude that some poor clerical munchkin (let’s call him Dobby) spent some small, yet irretrievable fraction of its lifetime constructing imaginative search terms in order to track down the other 15 groups. What were they?

I saw no reason to follow the footsteps of the clerical munchkin, but I can only assume Dobby typed in the name of each and every lecturer, module and – shudder – novel which has any link to the English syllabus. My own minutes of research have mostly revealed much aesthetic appreciation of several tutors (including, bizarrely, their facial hair). This presumably means Dobby’s search terms will have also included ‘beard appreciation’ and ‘sex god’. I found nothing personally insulting as such, although there was the occasional grumble about modules, unsurprisingly. I did spend minutes on this, though. Irretrievable minutes.

Evidently the English department is not the only victim of such churlish behaviour. Dobby’s colleague over in the business school (let’s call him Kreacher) and other clerical munchkins across the arts subjects have similarly spent irretrievable minutes on the subject. Kreacher – like his department – is particularly efficient, and fans of pro-whisker groups and the like may expect impolite e-mails from him suggesting that you remove the textual manifestation of your beard-appreciation. If you don’t, Kreacher will tell your personal tutor. And the senior tutor. And another undergraduate bigwig. So nyah.

Quite what these brass hats will do about your beard-appreciation remains a fudged matter. Suggest therapy perhaps?

If on the other hand, you have taken the opposite stance and are particularly anti-beard, you should also refrain from commenting. Any expression of personal dislike on these groups is deemed, it appears, inappropriate. Inappropriate for what? Have a look in your undergraduate handbooks. There are rules forbidding you from plagiarism, cheating in exams and pushing deadlines. What I can’t find – and please e-mail me if you do – is the clause: ‘Students found expressing anti-barbigerous sentiments via Facebook will face disciplinary action.’ And they would use barbigerous. Just to be unnecessarily spiteful munchkins.

Because that is what this whole debate is – whether you’re the clerical munchkin or the creator of a group. Good lecturers are necessarily subject to scrutiny from their young observers. It’s the inevitable fascination with the mentor figure and frankly, an inevitable consequence of any form of teaching. Look at JD and Dr Cox. Our beard fantasies look positively healthy in comparison.

Facebook is exactly what it claims to be, and no more. Academic departments make fools of themselves and their students by taking this new form of social communication much too seriously. Attempting to police the groups simply shows a reactionary and worryingly suppressive attitude. Certainly derogatory groups are lamentable but ignore it, for crying out loud. Weren’t you taught that in the playground?

The moral of the story is: never assume your lecturers and tutors have personalities. Take no mark of their mannerisms, foibles or academic merits. In no way analyse them amongst yourselves, personally or physically. Analysis? What do you think you are – a student?

Low Key: Warwick battle of the bands

2007-12-21T14:14:00.000-08:00

Heralded only by an Ents e-mail which clearly went straight to everyone’s junk folder, Bandsoc’s acoustic Battle of the Bands is just as important a test of a band’s ability as the main event.

Opening proceedings was solo guitarist and pianist Sarah Hacking-Brian. Impressively unfazed by first act nerves, Hacking-Brian played a 3 song-set moving from guitar to piano. She is talented vocally, combining a moodiness and quirkiness strongly reminiscent of Tori Amos. Perhaps her pensive singing was not fully complemented by full experimentation on either
instrument; repetitive chords formed the backdrop for the majority of her music and rendered doleful what ought to have been soulful.

Tuneful and moody follow-ups were pianist and vocalist combination George and Nikki. Opening with ‘Moonlight Song’, the pair gave a very strong performance although Nikki is clearly the more vocally talented of the two. The audience was particularly wowed by George’s innovative piano solos, and in spite of melancholy lyrics, this was a more upbeat set. Classic and confident, the music was very fitting for the Graduate Bar, but let down by a slight lyrical repetitiveness.

Where the first two acts relied on minimalism, The Frolics trundled onto the stage trailing clarinets, violas, double-stringed guitars and some kind of bongo thing in their wake. Sounding somewhere in between Broken Social Scene and the Rolling Stones in their Their Satanic Majesties Request days, The Frolics would not have been out of place in the ’69 Woodstock. Sterling performances from multi-talented clarinettist/violist Gemma Kappala-Ramsamy and drummer Cai Wingfield formed a chirpy, experimental backing to gravely, catchy vocals of Joseph Oldham. A trippy, mood-lifting performance with audience participation on a high. (Not literally, despite all appearances).

Toning the atmosphere down to minimalist again, one half of newcomers Dry Land performed a laid-back guitar set. This was the band’s first gig and is a promising indication of their electric performance in the fifth heat of Battle of the Bands. Unfortunately, the sound team were a little overenthusiastic after the loud psychedelics of The Frolics, and the careful intricacy of Rob Darnell’s guitarring were rather lost. Ian Thompson’s mellow, modulated vocals (well matched by layered chords and subtly stirring picking) rewarded careful listening, however. Further thought on the balance between vocals and guitarring, and more gig experience will give Dry Land the confidence they need for a fully rounded performance.

Penultimate act Jason Morgan bounced onto the stage with his guitar. Betraying an Irish lilt in his introduction, Morgan threatened to be another James Blunt wannabe. Certainly he blends a similar melodic melancholic sound, but his vocal confidence removes any dullness. His skill at guitarring and singing simultaneously, combined with a rhythmic interest quite difficult to achieve in an acoustic set made Morgan stand out. His guitarring is not to be faulted and is well-tailored for acoustic sessions.

If Morgan bounced onto the stage, the acoustic version of BOTB finalists Young and the Damned owned it. Like the Frolics, they provided an eclectic instrumental mix (was that a xylophone I saw in there?) although they provided a more frantic sound. Oozing stage charisma, the band radiated experience and enjoyment of their music. Citing The Killers, Depeche Mode and the Smiths as their influences, the acoustic trio consisted of talented pianist Jake Brookman, vocalist Patrick Carr and drummer Chaz Tomlinson. Fusing Futureheads-style vocal harmonics (that’s where any similarities end) with a sped-up take on the cheekiness of the Dirty Pretty Things, Young and the Damned were energetic and fully deserved their winning accolade.

Judges’ pick:

The Young and the Damned: http://www.myspace.com/youngandthedamned

Jason Morgan: http://www.jason-morgan.co.uk

Music review 2006

2007-12-21T14:02:00.000-08:00

The Newcomers

In a peculiar hybrid of geek and cool, it seems like the techno-wizzes have had the last laugh in 2006. The intriguing Lily Allen (Alright, Still) and the slightly less intriguing Sandi Thom (Smile…It Confuses People) have jumped on the Internet bandwagon which boomed with the Arctic Monkeys. The phenomena of myspace/music combined with the possibility of broadcasting your own gigs on YouTube have sparked a boom in the Internet almost-industry.

Allen revels in the banality of everything; from her urban surroundings in ‘Ldn’ to the smiling cattiness of a former lover in ‘Not Big’. Allen infuses exceptionally bitchy London lyrics with soft vocals which, when live, are almost indistinguishable from her ska-influenced backing band. The nature of the music, comprising chiefly of skipping ska/reggae, allows the album to form a kind of ‘life soundtrack’ highly fitting with the current gritty perception of the real. (The Streets, The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living; Plan B, Who Needs Actions When You Got Words).

Certainly on mainstream radio, Allen will have made regular summer listening alongside The Kooks. Despite earlier releases and the appearance of Inside In/Inside Out in January, it was only at the beginning of the festival season that this band moved markedly beyond the pages of NME and onto mainstream radio. Even the majority of Warwick’s scenesters failed to attend their early gig in the Student Union while only 6 months later, they played to a packed NME tent at the Carling festivals. Lacking the live frenetic energy of other such Warwick-loved bands the Subways, the Kooks’ success has not gone unquestioned. An unambitious mix of irresistibly sing-along tunes (‘Naïve’) with pleasant foot-tapping acoustic guitar (‘Ooh La’) makes this band a winner. Whether the Kooks are capable, as a band, of developing musically and innovatively remains to be seen.

The Fratellis provided the soundtrack to the shift between summer and autumn with Costello Music. The anti-Kooks camp will shun yet another skinny-jeaned ,big-haired NME favourite, and no doubt the Fratellis are characterised by the same themes. Yet both differ from the sexdrugsrocknroll of their blueprint, the Libertines, downplaying the world weariness in favour of youthful playfulness. What makes Costello Music so appealing is the constant undercutting of this youth with elements of 70’s city rock.

While Rihanna provides a fresher sound and versatility on the R&B scene than Beyoncé with A Girl Like Me (featuring the brilliant mashup of Softcell’s ‘Tainted Love’ in ‘S.O.S’ – a club favourite), 2006 has undoubtedly been the year of Indie glam. The less said about Kasabian’s Empire, the better.

The Sellouts

2006 saw a strawberries-and-pepper collaboration halfway through the year with Nelly Furtado’s joint effort with Timbaland, resulting in Loose. Like said combination of foodstuffs, the two complement each other surprisingly well. (No, really). Despite being one of the few strong female figures in popular/folk music without resorting to the mainstream machine of self-promotion, Furtado’s Folklore flopped in 2003. The result has been a move away from the ‘ethnic’ roots of Whoa, Nelly! towards a total embrace of the MTV culture, even featuring Justin Timberlake in the sexualised ‘Promiscuous’ video. While the relaxed panpipes of ‘All Good Things’ (featuring Coldplay frontman Chris Martin) offer a brief respite from the almost satirically inappropriate club beats of ‘Maneater’, Furtado has lost the musical innocence which characterised her earlier releases.

Higher up on the mainstream machine is Beyoncé with the wonderfully entitled B’day (so called because the album was produced in a record three weeks, just before the singer’s birthday). With such a glaringly obvious publicity oversight, Beyoncé’s fans might wonder if she puts as little thought into her music. Well…yes and no. ‘Crazy In Love’ found Beyoncé the winning song formula of powerful diva vocals plus occasional guest rapper (Jay Z, who has returned from an official retirement lasting 2 years with Kingdom Come). Beyoncé has proved beyond all doubt that she has sterling abilities in both her vocal performance and showmanship, yet current mock-ballad release ‘Irreplaceable’ could easily have been a number from Survivor by Destiny’s Child. Coupled with the angry ‘Ring the Alarm’ (complete with fire alarm effects), this is nothing fans haven’t heard before. Previous album Dangerously In Love largely perfects Beyoncé’s established Independent Woman image, and fans who want more of the same will not be disappointed.

Rather darker in tone is Muse’s fifth album Black Holes And Revelations. Performing their most ambitious tour yet, Matt Bellamy and co. have perfected a seamless live act filled with musical fireworks to delight everyone from Indie ravers to metalheads. This all-inclusive sound is achieved by Bellamy experimenting with his earlier, endearingly geeky obsession with the electric and distortion sound effects first heard in Origin Of Symmetry. Black Holes is a more accessible album and Muse seem to have commendably retained their original fan base. However, a less chaotic sound is achieved at the expense of Bellamy’s blinding piano solos. Throughout the previous albums the classical and the electric intertwine to form the sound which is particularly unique to the band and perfected in Absolution. Black Holes may appeal to the thousands Muse will perform to in Wembley Arena, but it lacks the soul and depth the band is capable of achieving.

Improvers and Shakers

In the Spears/Aguilera teen pop playoff of 1999, it seemed like Britney had it all. Justin Timberlake, money, better hair and Justin Timberlake. With the dawn of 2007, it’s Aguilera who has established herself as the superior both in vocals and dignity. Moving from the awakening that is Christina Aguilera towards dodgy duets with Ricky Martin on Mi Refejo, Aguilera has stayed constant while the Latin American boom has faded like a badly-applied tan. Aguilera’s progress between the albums is so neatly divided it could be presented in boxes. From the gritty seduction of Stripped, Back to Basics is a vocally mature album, this time in the persona of a soul diva. Aguilera however, is not a soul diva and this starlet pose is not entirely convincing. It is nonetheless an impressive and jazzy effort from an artist finally established in herself. Moving entirely away from the jagged edges of 1998 debut Songs For Polar Bears is Snow Patrol’s Eyes Open. Maintaining the melodic melancholy of Final Straw, the band have constructed an exceptionally thoughtful and, on occasion, dark album. Their overt focus on sentimentality and a sound so subtle it is in danger of being bland weaken the album. Subtlety, however, is what characterises earlier, groundbreaking single ‘Run’ and the same compelling element in Eyes Open demands a second listen.

Warwick Sanctuary - Heating the Coconut

2007-12-21T13:27:00.000-08:00

The word "coconut" is used as a mild derogatory slang word referring to a person of Latino, Filipino, or Indian subcontinent descent who emulates a white person (brown on the outside, white on the inside).

When even Wikipedia, that bastion of hastily assorted knowledge, picks up on a cultural in-joke around since the 80s, one wonders why there seems to be so little comment on the subject.

I have never heard either term applied to anyone other than someone of British Asian descent but, being a Coconut, clearly I don’t hang around with enough Latino and Filipino students. Warwick is full of coconuts. We’re everywhere. We scorned London, Leicester and Coventry for being too Indian. We’re a little intimidated by Cambridge, and we’ve learnt to accept that goddammit, there are no decent curry houses in Leamington Spa. We go to Millennium Balti, with its endearing Eurotrash music, in the knowledge that it’s like a scene from Goodness Gracious Me and eye the waiters with a mixture of sympathy and scorn. We even think up Westernized nicknames for ourselves for our caucasion fellows apparently incapable of coping with polysyllables (viz: ‘Dave’ for Devanand, ‘Dippy’ for Dipankar, and my own personal favourite, ‘Dan’ for Dhananjay).

Rather cruelly, we shun the company of Indian soc; a society chiefly run by what we snootily term freshies. Wikipedia again comes to my rescue: The term is commonly used when immigrants from a foreign nation have not yet assimilated the host nation's culture, language, and behaviour. [They] tend to be identified by their fashion, social preferences, behaviour towards others, and — perhaps most commonly and distinctively — their accents.

Yes, to say the least. Goodness Gracious Me picked up on and hyperbolised the ridiculous habits of our parents, instilling us second generation coconuts with the fear of becoming anything like them. What simple, harmless entertainment it is to imitate the Bombay accent and paint it as an indication of stupidity. Unfortunately, we rather shot ourselves in the foot by portraying ourselves and our parents in this fashion to the Western side of the world, because it results in arrant tripe like Bride and Prejudice. Oh dear God. No one really dances around in synchronisation at Indian weddings in belly-revealing outfits. The less said about Lloyd Webber’s Bollywood Dreams, the better.

In spite of this, there is one event – hosted by our Union – which does much to combine these two breeds at Warwick. It is called Heat and takes place on arbitrary Fridays. Laughingly, it describes itself an ‘international’ music event. Lies. I’ve never heard them play anything but bhangra past 11 o’ clock. Whatever the coconuts might pretend, a very small bit of them longs to be part of that noisy melee of Asian people smoking sheesha. Thus they sidle along to Heat, hidden under a hat, cast off their skinny jeans and admit that they know the words to every song from Dil Se. Albeit in a horrendous accent. So lost are the coconuts in their pretence that they perpetrate their own clichés. Indiansoc ought to set up a charity: Heating the Coconut – helping coconuts become a little browner on the inside. All donations to be given in rupees.

Warwick Boar - Warwick on University Challenge

2007-12-21T13:16:00.000-08:00

The Warwick team competing in last night’s ‘University Challenge’ thrashed Emmanuel College, Cambridge in what may transpire to be Warwick’s most promising performance yet.

Legendarily, Warwick University has always fared badly on the quiz show, scores even dropping into minus figures for interruptions. The Boar can reveal, however, that this year’s team looks to set significantly higher standards for any successors.

The team consisted of four students: Daisy Christodoulou, finalist English student and captain; Rory Gill, finalist English literature and Italian; Prakash Patel, MOAC PhD and Harold Wyber, a third year economist.

None of the four students had met before qualifying for ‘University Challenge’, but their captain Daisy claims that the team’s strength lay in how well they got on. ‘Last February, the sports officer organised a quiz based on questions set by University Challenge and the top four got into the team. We all knew what we would have to face, and I’d say we all contributed equally, especially in that first match.’

Jeremy Paxman, the long-time host of the quiz, is famous for his quickfire style of questioning and alleged favouritism of his own university, Cambridge. ‘In terms of favouritism, it wasn’t all that noticeable. He has a slightly patronising manner, but we learnt not to be phased by it,’ Daisy commented. ‘It wasn’t like we were an Oxbridge college with loads of pressure because of any previous history of having done well – we haven’t had an amazing record on the show. It’s the pressure of being on television which you can’t prepare for.’ The Warwick team’s initial struggle to answer starter questions reflects the intense pressure before the cameras. Despite this, the team’s performance swiftly picked up, and they acquitted themselves admirably.

University Challenge begins with 28 teams competing in the first round knock-out. Thereafter the 14 victorious teams as well as the 4 highest scoring losing teams progress into the next round. Although this first performance is a hopeful indication of future matches, the team captain insists that the most enjoyable times during filming were not about the glory. ‘You have to remember it’s just a game, and there are no prizes at the end of it. We got to socialise with other teams, and we got to go out and celebrate afterwards. We all got on really well – you go to have fun, and the best aspect was the team.’

This relaxed attitude stood the team in good stead in their first round, and Monday’s clear-cut victory against Emmanuel College is indicative that it will continue to do so.

Warwick Boar - 3 Years Wasted

2007-12-21T12:30:00.000-08:00

A high percentage of lecturers throughout the country believe that further education is a sell-out. The results of a survey, to be published next week, reveal that 77 per cent of academics consider that higher education now prioritises targets, not the joy of learning once associated with it. Other symptoms of this academic devaluation include a relaxation of required standards, loss of intellectual excitement, and a creeping de-personalisation as the education system becomes more bureaucratic.

The study highlights the emergence of several problems. The controversy over Tony Blair’s push for a higher university attendance amongst young people has led to pressured universities lowering their entry standards in order to fulfil quota requirements. Increased spending on the expansion of higher education during recent years has also meant academia is becoming increasingly administrative. Finally, the introduction of top-up fees (of which Warwick was a strong proponent) could potentially reduce the concept of a degree to a commodity with quantifiable objectives and outcomes. Sarah Raffel, in her second year of Politics, disagrees. “It all depends on what you want from your degree. I don’t think it is a quantifiable commodity – perhaps some international students very much want their money’s worth, but it’s always going to be more about the uni experience as a whole for the home students.”

Within the organization of Warwick University is the Centre for Academic Practice (CAP); one example of the administrative measures taken to reach acceptable targets. CAP provides "support for lecturers on development issues in teaching and learning, research and academic management and leadership”. It is this introduction of such legalistic, corporate bodies which academics claim has de-personalised higher education. Senior lecturers are offered “management development” courses in keeping with Warwick’s increasingly corporate structure.

One academic source criticised the negative effect of CAP on teaching morale and the student-tutor relationship. This latter is further diminished by the university’s attitude that “all students are possible litigants”. Similarly, several lecturers have commented on “the Warwick brand” which the university has perfected as it has expanded in size. “The standard Warwick degree is a 2,1. It’s the ‘Warwick package’ and makes for a good brand name. We’re more modern than Oxbridge, but there’s little sense of heterogeneity”. Part of this branding involves a cheapening of the Warwick degree as the university churns out standard graduates tailored for the job market. Some such as Joe Bond, a second-year M.O.R.S.E. student, remain optimistic however. “It’s true that there are more people in higher education, but degrees from institutions like Warwick are always going to be worth a lot.”

Some academics have commented that the problems of higher education do not rest only with the universities, but the Blair ideology, in which the marketplace is a “determinant of the curriculum”.

Undergrad by day, pole-dancer by night

2007-12-20T15:18:00.000-08:00

Yes, this is exactly what you think it is. It is not, as perhaps the media-cynical reader might suppose, a provocative title heading an article which in fact transpires to be a badly-disguised pun on the latest expedition to the Arctic Circle.

Up and down the country, a small but significant revolution in exercise is occurring. Pole-dancing may not rival the celebrity-starred popularity of yoga just yet, but it’s certainly making its mark.

I took lessons with Liz Dixon of Pole-Positions to find out why. Leather boots (to prevent friction on your legs) in hand, I sidled furtively to a room advertised on a leaflet posted through my door. Like some clandestine, arcane witchcraft society, therein stood a small circle of nervous women. And in the middle of this gathering? The shiny necessity to this unusual sport – a pole.

Sexy walk

Liz herself, a stoic, experienced and motivating instructor, assured us that her pole-dancing classes were popular with students and housewives alike, both of whom wished to boost their own confidence, as well as tone their physiques. The First Lesson First things first – the Sexy Walk. To build self-confidence and put those high heeled boots to good use, we started off learning to walk in an exaggeratedly seductive fashion.

Exaggeration is the key word here. Envisaging you were Kate Moss in that White Stripes video also helped (although the mirror opposite gave something of a reality check). The right walk, though it initially made us feel slightly silly, was essential – there was no point approaching the pole as though it had teeth.

Once we had the walk conquered, the next stage was the Fireman, so-called for self-explanatory reasons. It was a simple move which required us to Sexy Walk (oh yes) around the pole to gather momentum, before jumping onto the pole and sliding down with both knees. And so began pole-dancing… The Image Pole-dancing is breaking away from its image of sleazy strip-joints in the city. Men and women alike are finding out that it is a fun and sensual form of exercise available to them in a safe and welcoming environment.

Camaraderie

Companies, such as Pole Positions, are springing up with the express purpose of offering pole-dancing as a keep-fit alternative for everyone – students, housewives and even men! Pole dancing takes endurance and co-ordination, as well as the sensuality which comes chiefly with practice and growing assurance within the environment. The pole itself is constructed of a lightweight metal and held in place by threading – meaning that much of the pressure of a pole-dancer’s weight is put on the ceiling and floor, and not on the pole itself. Just for Fun As the course moved on, there grew a feeling of camaraderie within the class as we all encouraged and complimented each other.

A course such as this is perfect for those who are shy and wish to boost their self-confidence – whether on the dance floor or for themselves. Whether you choose to let the information slip is up to you entirely… Courses with Pole Positions are available in Leamington Spa, Coventry and, more recently, Hemel Hempstead. Each one hour lesson costs £15, and the course runs over six weeks; more details can be found here.

Listen to Soapbox on the radio: Pole-dancing